


Shoot to Win

by FantasyQuietly



Series: Show Pony [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Angst, Bounty Hunters, Country & Western, Cowboy Dean, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Preacher Cas, Religion, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:40:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27873977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FantasyQuietly/pseuds/FantasyQuietly
Summary: Dean's just got one more job to do before he can afford to visit his brother back East. Just so happens the Novaks have a runaway son and will pay handsomely to have him back safe and sound.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Show Pony [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040794
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	Shoot to Win

**Author's Note:**

> Was I possessed to write this all in one sitting? Yes. Am I sane enough to sit on it for the night and proofread come morning? No.

The church sat stark in the middle of the valley. Chipped paint, nailed shutters, little graveyard to the side nearly buried itself by the snow. The wind was ever whistling between the mountains, setting about a low drone that burred its way into your skull until it felt hellishly empty when the gales died down. The trees a rifle’s distance away looked bent enough to be a miracle they hadn’t broken. 

It felt, to Dean, a Godless place to put such a thing. The cross above the steeple must have been nailed with a sneer, must curl lips to travelers passing through. Those using it as a waystation in their travels, or a haven for a time, must have truly found themselves in some despicable sort of way. It wasn’t the sort of place he’d imagined when he first took the job. 

He still thinks nightly of the estate he’d entered just weeks ago. Everyone had stared with pointed eyes as his boots tracked mud, but since none of them dared ask aloud, he didn’t bother to remove them. There were more rooms than made sense in that place, so they’d had to make up uses for several of them. A space just to smoke. A library without a single book out of place. The only one he’d found entertaining in the least was the “receiving room” though the eyes he’d made at such a moniker were found just as appalling as his everything else. 

But that was alright—it seemed the one thing they’d valued him for, they put at quite the price. So, they led him through halls where they placed tables which were only big enough to show off more opulence, sat him in a leather chair, and all gathered at once to preface his hiring with a tale of woe. Clenched jaws, teary eyed blinks, stifled curses. The show of it was truly something, amounted in the end to a runaway kid. 

Castiel Novak was to be brought home alive and well, where sense would presumably be beat into him. Dean was no stranger to a switch and the way the father’s fingers visibly itched told him all he’d needed to know. Were he a better person he’d likely have some sympathy, and though he felt twinges in the thin, raised scars where his thighs met his ass, he couldn’t drum up much for a kid being hauled back to his life of luxury. 

The austere siblings which had stood as gargoyles behind the couch their parents over took their turns after prices had been negotiated. He was amply described, his last location given, his known associates outed. They each had their own speculations about where he’d hide, and Dean had wasted time proving each and every one wrong. Was hard to tell if it were a blessing or not for this Castiel, but worth noting either way. 

It could be that he was truly an elusive target and Dean had misjudged him based on his family, or that they knew so little of him that it was the same as starting from scratch. Either way, it meant he’d needed to break a few tools out of his own box. What was supposed to be easy money and a quick ticket to see his new nephew out east dragged long past his patience. 

He rounded the corner on this little sanctuary with knuckles just now turning green, a cut that wouldn’t stop seeping across one cheek. If he needed an apothecary after this, it was damn well coming out of the kid’s pocket. It all needed to be gone by the time he showed up on Sammy’s doorstep—on its way to looking old. 

Dean tied his horse up outside, noted there was only one dappled mare grazing around back. He didn’t hear much happening inside, pausing to listen at every window, but there was smoke rising. The wind made it easy to tread quiet, let him mark the exits, check the outhouse, clock a barn way out in the distance that might still hear a scuffle. 

If a real priest maintained this place, men of the cloth were hard to account for. Some would sell you what you wanted to know for just the glint of silver, others could be flashed the barrel of a gun and find their foundation unshaken. As a constant between all cuts of them, Dean found each to be as irritating as the last. They’d invoke Christ on any measure of their spectrum and did it as though he couldn’t perceive the absurdity of such a thing. 

But they didn’t react well to derision, so he knocked before entering, shook his hat off outside as he removed it. The actual air inside wasn’t much more comforting, but the wind, at least, no longer bit at his face. He shook much like any of the beasts he’d skinned to patch together his furs, called out into the empty space. “Father? Don’t mean to interrupt, but if you could spare some time for a traveler—.” 

Though the outside of the space was so unremarkable as though to consider it abandoned, Dean couldn’t help the way his eyes roved as he stepped deeper into the interior. The wooden slats had been painted all manner of milky colors, natural pigment faint and mottled, but homey. In contrast the ceiling was a deep, dark blue with chunky, irregular stars. Bundles of herbs hung from the rafters in various states of drying and perfumed the place with a peppery, herbal musk just the right side of medicinal. 

Dean’s fingers twitched with the muscle memory to bless himself as he passed a crucifix, but he tamped down the urge easily enough. With the door to the sacristy creaking open it was easy to break his little trance before it got the better of him. Instead, he felt his focus pulled taut as the preacher emerged. Like a mutt with his leash yoked for the first time, he scrambles to a stop, makes a bewildered sound. 

The preacher is young—younger than one would attribute for such a position—and... tousled. The messy arrangement of his raven hair belies activities Dean would not dare accuse him of, even as rebellious as he finds himself, but his piercing eyes and unkempt stubble do nothing to dissuade the thoughts. His countenance is stern, his voice like gravel when he speaks, and it lends a certain gravitas to round out his impression. “I have time  immemoriam for those who seek help.” The words are patently ridiculous, but the small smile with which he delivers them makes the language bloom. 

Were this to be the sort of preacher Dean had been accustomed to in his youth, perhaps he would have gotten more out of church than the dismal obligation still hung about his chest. He stood still in a moment of consideration, hands fussing with fasteners beneath his furs. It was slowly dawning on him that this man might not be harboring his target, at least not in the plainest sense, but winter days ran short and Dean would rather hog tie him come morning, at the start of their travel. Best to keep appearances for the night. “Well I’m about to lose some bits out in that bitter cold, so if you’ve got room to spare, I’d rather make sure the family jewels actually get inherited.” 

The only rise he gets from his crass behavior is a single, raised brow, but it’s enough to make him grin as he continues to approach. “The wound on your face appears a bit more pressing, why don’t we leave the tending of those other areas to your wife, hm?” The father’s own dig makes his face twist as though just holding back a smug smile, but Dean rewards him for playing along with a laugh nonetheless. 

As they step within reach of each other, they both take their time with an examination—sizing the other up in full before attempting to make conversation again. “No wife,” Dean crows, “if there’s no kid I  gotta take care of, there damn sure won’t be a woman waiting on me. I’m a firm believer the egg comes before the chicken,  comprende ?” 

The preacher waits a long, dry beat as he outlasts Dean’s shit eating smirk, then directs him back into the sacristy. “ Well we’d better take a look at that gash on your face then. It looks like that bandage has frozen to the skin and I don’t suppose your fair maidens will lift their skirts so readily if half that pretty face is missing.” Dean blushes, then balks. 

It’s not the first time he’s been called a pretty boy, won’t likely be the last, but those to comment on his long lashes, fair freckles, lush lips are usually the type looking to weaponize it. At a younger age, just that alone would have been enough to send them stumbling outside, Dean ready to make his antagonist regret it, or perhaps make his face a little less pretty in the process. 

The father had turned away to rifle through a desk on the back wall, pull up a stool, but when he starts to sense Dean’s stony silence, he settles for what’s already in his hands, turns back. He looks at Dean the way one would evaluate a hissing cat, sucking on his teeth for a moment. But he still takes his seat, waves Dean over. 

His hands are in his lap as Dean deliberates and he doesn’t gesture or call again. He waits, eyes staying alit on his visitor, but softly. They do not weigh on his shoulders or start to bore into his face.  So he relents, sits across from the preacher on a threadbare bed. He snarls, just a little, just enough to make his point when blunt fingers start their ministrations on his cheek. 

A rag is soaked in a basin full of warm water, sat atop the bandage to seep and melt down all the ice crystals. It makes the cut itch and burn, but the relief from feeling the bloody rag slowly start to detach is worth it. The preacher works in quiet contemplation for a while, but speaks again as he starts to clean the wound. “God metes out his gifts carefully,” it is not a rote verse, nor an immutable truth, but spoken as an earnest evaluation. “They don’t always feel that way. They can be easy to hate. Marking you as special is a mark nonetheless—a singling out. You may hate Him for creating hardships in your life, but there is a reward to overcoming them, and it’s a reward that is wholly your own to claim.” 

Dean chews on his lips, feeling somewhat the part of a chastised child, staring at his hands in reticence. “All the practice seems to have paid off for you, eh father?” It’s hard to tell where the guise ends and the man begins, but Dean never felt much of the charitable sort when reading one’s character. Maybe that said more about him than others, but  it suited him just fine. 

The preacher snorts, averts his gaze a moment, starts patching Dean back up. “I know it well, but not from any verse... It’s a truth I’ve taught myself over time.” He shrugs, chews some herbs before packing them against gash. “I found loving myself far harder than loving God and that seemed antithetical to the whole point. 

If I believe him to make no faults, to have made me, to deserve my trust so much as to fear no death, then how could I—in good faith—believe there was intrinsically something wrong with the way I am?” As he finished, the preacher seemed to think on his own words for a few moments and then smiled, though it came nowhere close to meeting his eyes. “At least that’s where my logic has landed, but the heart and the mind are contrarian in nature. What one knows unflinchingly, the other cannot help but doubt.” 

Dean squints his eyes hard, trying his best to peer into the man before him. If it’s all an act, it’s one the preacher should be commended for, one Dean would honestly be jealous of. He could rob a bank and be caught red handed, but given enough words give a compelling argument against his arrest. It’s not at all what he’d expected going into this. For one, he thought he’d be looking for a boy, and a spoiled, pompous one at that. 

He’d had the image in his head of some brat just barely a bachelor gallivanting on one wild season before he has to take his place within the family structure. He was sure he would catch the errant son drunk in a ditch, buried in whores, dead from playing desperado. It seemed so cut and dry, that he’d essentially be putting an  oversized toddler back in time out. 

But the picture painted before him was stark in its contrast. The story felt beyond him. Rich family, youngest son. There appeared little love lost between all of them, but the arrangement was suitable for all his siblings before. Perhaps the weight of expectation was too much to bear, but then why escape here? Why play at preacher? Why pontificate on  self-worth while holding back tears? 

Dean didn’t even realize they’d been staring into each other's eyes for many long minutes until his stomach gurgled and shook them both from it. “It is about that time, isn’t it?” The preacher smiled and he had crow’s feet around his eyes and for some reason that made Dean feel safe around him. “The hare’s been tough this season, but it breaks down well enough the longer you cook it.” He moves around to a fireplace with cast iron pot he’d been tending. When he opens the lid a hearty fragrance of fat and those dried herbs hits Dean like an invitingly boozy breath. 

“I wouldn’t want to put you out, father. I was always told I had a hollow leg and I don’t imagine you meant to share that meal.” Dean’s got rations enough to make it on the return trip anyhow, and though he can feel himself salivating, there is something that feels mean spirited about so thoroughly swindling this man before wrangling him back him. 

“Nonsense,” the preacher waves back at him without even turning. He retrieves lopsided clay bowls from atop the mantle, rosary around his wrist clanking against the pottery. A thick stew is labelled into each—one more heartily than the other—which is presented to Dean without fanfare. “I’ve fed many a man who claimed such a thing. I take a sense of pride disproving this theory.” He puts his own bowl in his lap to bless himself, ducks his head to say a short prayer, doesn’t wait to suggest Dean should do the same. 

After a bit of hesitation, not wanting a hot meal to go to waste while he hems and haws, Dean digs in. Immediately he gives a bawdy groan when the food hits his mouth. It’s been a bit since he had anything fresh, let alone fatty and seasoned. The preacher snorts, but as promoted, is joyful at Dean’s response. He tries not to laugh as Dean immediately starts shoveling the stew into his mouth, making his cheeks balloon before he takes a moment to chew what’s in them and swallow it down. 

Dinner passes in relative, amiable silence—capped by the preacher fetching a bottle from behind his desk, popping the cork with an impish glow to his eyes. Dean’s surprised, then admonishes himself for it, having to remember it’s all an act after all. They  cheers , and the alcohol sets about a warm glow starting in his stomach and steaming off his cheeks. 

Dean had meant to just take a little, just to ease the seeping of his conscience, but it was cold and the preacher as turning out to be decent company, and the booze was just the right amount of sweet. A few cups in he was lightly hiccupping, had a more affected drawl to his words than he’d had in years. “It’s a long way out from anywhere, father. Odd place to set up shop.  Don’tcha get lonely?” 

The preacher purses his lips, regards his glass. They’re on chairs around the fire and he’s just started to lean back on two of the legs, rocking himself with a foot on the foot of the mantel. It’s shaky, but not shaky enough for Dean to reach out and stop him. “It’s lonely,” he admits, cutting his eyes back to Dean for a long, heavy moment, before fluttering back to his glass. “But there’s something freeing about that, isn’t there? Surely you would know, the kind of business that you do.” 

Dean feels his stomach drop, but doesn’t react. The preacher just means him travelling on his own. Don’t blow it. He opens his mouth to bullshit some kind of answer that surely throws off the scent, just in case, but the preacher plows on ahead, eyes fixed. 

“Alone with your horse, always moving to towns where no one knows you. You get to choose how you present yourself—who you want to be to them. And in the moments where there’s no one, there’s no mask. You don’t have to manicure this thing that they all interact with. You don’t even have to lie to yourself.” The preacher fishes for drink in his empty glass, mouth dry. When he finds none, he scrubs at the tackiness of his lips with his sleeve, a heat over taking him that Dean hadn’t yet seen. “Everyone that leaves here, leaves thinking of me as I want to be. I am and will forever be the ideal stranger to them. 

And even if I feel like I might go mad some of the nights that I am alone with that infernal howling, I will have made the choice for myself, as myself.” He fades into a lost silence—a look of questioning haunting his face. The fire casts the shadows across it deeper, make the shine in his wetting eyes more fragile. The legs on his chair fall to the floor with a violent clatter and he slumps. “I don’t want to go back,” he murmurs, and  it’s so soft Dean almost thinks he made it up, but the preacher turns to look at him, pleading. 

Dean feels his throat rasp as he struggles to find words, to process how... “Castiel, I don’t know you, or your family, or this situation, but they just want their son back. They’re not  gonna hurt you, they’re just shitty rich folks,” it sounds hollow even to him, tastes like ash in his mouth. “ So you  gotta grease your hair back and run some numbers, so what? 

It’s a challenge, right? That's what you were telling me, weren’t you?” He finds himself standing, scuttling closer to Castiel as he argues for the both of them. “God blessed you with a fancy pants family, that gives a very big shit about what you’re doing and where you are. Maybe you find that challenging, but... you’re supposed to do something with it.” Bitterness, like bile or char or rotted tobacco stains his tongue with the ugliness of what he’s saying. But he’s  gotta get back east,  gotta see that kid,  gotta tell Sammy. 

Castiel’s shoulders are shaking and he starts to cry and Dean knows he cares way too much because he should be hitting a guy this pathetic, but—. He stumbles to his knees, but shuffles his way over, rights himself using the preacher’s lap. He looks up into that face and he doesn’t see emasculation, doesn’t see cowardice, can’t find self-pity. There is just a sadness so deep and profound that it takes his breath away. 

“Don’t cry,” he husks, feeling his body and his mouth taken over completely by instinct. “Don’t cry, Cas, please.” He pushes up so their faces are level and grabs the preacher by the face, wipes his tears with his thumbs. Castiel shrinks like the tenderness is painful—a wilting flower being scorched by the sun. His head is turning, but his body is arching out of the chair, and his eyes are wild as they flit all over Dean’s face. It is a chaotic, animal thing, and it takes a second to click with Dean. “Oh.” 

Castiel hears his realization and starts to squirm to get away, but Dean tightens his grip and surges instead to meet him. Bracing and violent and uneven they kiss. Alarms ring in Dean’s head, but the booze in his body redistributes its warmth and suddenly he is loose and languid. He is no stranger to the  things men have to do out in the wilderness. 

When you’ve been herding or hunting— ranging out in the wild with no other human contact for months and months—it's an unspoken truth that sometimes you just need connection. He’s been that rough touch in the night, the warm body in your bed roll. This is not that. His breath is hitching and Castiel mewls into his mouth. They part to breathe, but then Dean is  _ tasting  _ him and it’s thrilling and terrifying and unlike anything. 

Hands pull him closer and he feels the undeniable maleness of them both smashed tight against each other. Wiry hair and hard shapes and deep groans that are passed between them. It’s so alien and illicit and he’s been thrill seeking his whole life, but not even a grizzly could spike his adrenaline like the kiss of another man. 

Their hands tangle and Castiel’s nails dig into his knuckles they are gripped so tight. He pulls away only to whisk the preacher into his arms and throw him to the bed. The sun goes down and the light from the fire is the only thing to illuminate them undressing, their forms rolling and clashing and rubbing taut against each other as a bow and violin string. 

Dean loses himself to it completely—so much so that his next conscious thought is the pain from the sun glinting in his eyes come dawn. He reawakens, naked in the preacher’s bed, sticky. Castiel is sat across from him, like he was while cleaning Dean’s wound last night. But now his  raiments are gone, exchanged for plain travel clothes. 

Dean’s first instinct is to cover himself, but the longer he lies bared to Castiel, the more he wants the other man to look. The smell of their sex is still warm in the bedding, but the rest of the air in the room is winter crisp. Dean can’t help wanting to stay where he’s at even longer, stretching beneath the sheets. His joints pop, the twisted knots of all his injuries tighten, then give. 

Castiel waits until both his eyes are open, until he rolls onto his back. “I’ll go with you willingly, just don’t tie me up, please.” He asks as though he expects nothing of Dean, like he wouldn’t be surprised to be hog tied this very moment—gagged and have a sack thrown over his head. It hurts, a little, but Dean was hired by the  Novaks for some specific reasons, one he knows aren’t pretty. 

He feels like they should talk about... they should talk, but it was never his strong suit nor his first inclination.  So he nods, quickly bathes in the basin, dresses. Castiel packs a few things from the sacristy as he does, but leaves most. Books, the herbs, his frock. His rosary never left his wrist, not even last night. Dean makes them coffee and they dip stale bread for breakfast, hit the trail. 

They don’t talk. For days. Cas is a knowledgeable camper, a good enough rider. They work in wordless synchronicity, as though they’ve traveled together a thousand times before. It’s easy, except the times where it’s not. Cas doesn’t make eye contact with him much. It’s... strained when he does. He looks—well Dean notices the way he looks when he’s got ice crystals in his lashes, when he’s stretching after a long ride, when he spends the morning telling tales to his horse. 

He can’t stop thinking about the way they felt together. Dean’s been what some might call loose throughout his life. He took his pleasures anywhere he could get them and found a particular fondness in the comforts a woman afforded. He’s absolutely had sex he’d lose a finger for, but that night? With Cas? It haunts him. The way the hair on their thighs bristled against each other. The fluttering of their stomachs between one another, wet with sweat. The hungry, biting kisses and the accompanying swallow of the other’s sounds. 

He wants to pull Cas to him. He wants to share their horse and simply rest his head over the preacher’s shoulder. He wants to wrap them both in his fur as they ride and tease his cold fingers over all that precious skin on Cas’ torso that he’s keeping warm. He wants to slide their noses along each other and let their foreheads bump and come so close to kissing another man it’s fearful, all the while knowing that they can and they have and they will. 

But they’re getting closer to the city. They’re not alone on the roads anymore. They start staying nights in rooms and eating tavern food and people are coming over to say hi to Castiel and ask where he’s been off too. Dean’s dying to ask how they know him, if he even wants to talk to them. He wants to make excuses for them to be off and gallop away from it all. 

He has the chance over and over and over again, but he’s got a train to catch. They’re at the gates of the Novak property when Cas pulls his mare to a stop and turns. He looks Dean full in the face and finally he finds words. “Thank you for escorting me home, Mr. Winchester. I’ll advocate a bonus for you, I’m sure my parents will be grateful for how well I’ve been treated.” It’s all wrong. It’s proper and affected and blank. All pleasantries and faff and distance. 

Dean feels ever lost for words as the horses turn and they start their way up the path. Leaving Cas here, like this. It’s a condemnation. It’s him washing his hands of something he only sees through murky water. But the door is open. Their butler is clapping and the parents are being summoned. Dean feels his head reeling as Castiel gets ushered away without a word, and he’s paid handsomely. 

He moves as though through fog when he’s ushered off the grounds, makes his way to the station, buys the ticket he’s been longing for. He’s only woken when the whistle sounds and the conductor’s hollering for everyone to stand back off the platform. He can’t help but wonder if he’s ever felt free, if maybe his whole life Dean Winchester has been lonely. 

It’s gnawing at him—something aching to break free into the light of day. He thinks about his brother, well off in a city somewhere. He’s got a career and a wife and a kid. He walked out of their shit house, away from their shit father, and he never looked back. Not even to see if Dean was following. 

There’s a train coming down the track and he’s not sure if he’s meant to be on it. 

**Author's Note:**

> All the SPN drama busted into my life and made me feel feelings again, so I'm just going full high school and writing unhinged, album based fanfiction. If you wanna see me burn through Show Pony, stick around.


End file.
